Zion is prospering at present and high priests are stationed to watch over the several branches.

December 1, 1832. There are now five
hundred and thirty-eight individuals in this land belonging to the Church.

And it came to pass that in the fall
of the year, 1832, the disciples at Ohio received the gift of tongues; and in June, 1833,
we received the gift of tongues in Zion.

About these days we received the following
epistle:

We, the undersigned citizens of Jackson
County, believing that an important crisis is at hand, as regards our civil society, in consequence of a pretended religious
sect of people that have settled and are still settling in our county, styling themselves Mormons, and intending to rid ourselves,
peaceably if we can and forcibly if we must, and believing as we do, that the arm of civil law does not afford us a guarantee,
or at least not a sufficient one against the evils which are now inflicted upon us, and seem to be increasing by the said
religious sect, deem it expedient and of the highest importance to form ourselves into a company for the better and easier
accomplishment of our purpose, which we deem almost superfluous to say is justified as well by the law of nature as by the
law of self-preservation. It is more than two years since the first of these fanatics or knaves, (for one or the other they
undoubtedly are), made their first appearance among us; and pretending as they did, and now do, to hold personal communion
and converse face to face with the Most High God, to receive communications and revelations direct from heaven; to heal the
sick by the laying on of hands; and in short, to perform all the wonder-working miracles wrought by the inspired apostles
and prophets. We believed them deluded fanatics, or weak and designing knaves, and that they and their pretensions would soon
pass away; but in this we were deceived.

The arts of a few designing leaders
among them have thus far succeeded in holding them together as a society, and since the arrival of the first of them they
have daily increased; and if they had been respectable citizens in society, and thus deluded, they would have been entitled
to our pity rather than to our comtempt and hatred. But from their appearance; from their manners; and from their conduct,
since their coming among us, we have every reason to believe that with but a very few exceptions, they were of the very dregs
of that society from which they came; lazy, idle and vicious.

This we conceive is not idle assertion,
but a fact susceptible of proof. For with these few exceptions above named, they brought into our county little or no property
with them, and left less behind them, and we infer that those only yoked themselves to the Mormon car who had nothing earthly
or heavenly to lose by the change; and we fear that if some of the leaders among them had paid the forfeit due to crime instead
of being chosen ambassadors of the Most High, they would have been inmates of solitary cells. But their conduct here stamps
their characters in their true color. More than a year it has been ascertained that they have been tampering with our slaves,
and endeavoring to sow dissension and raise sedition among them. Of this their Mormon leaders were informed, and they said
they would deal with any of their members who should again in like case offend. But how spurious are appearances. In a late
number of the Star printed in Independence by the leaders
of the sect, there is an article inviting free negroes and mulattoes from other states to become Mormons and move and settle
among us. This exhibits them in still more odious colors. It manifests a desire on the part of their society to inflict on
our society an injury that they know would be to us entirely unsupportable, and one of the surest means of driving us from
the country; for it would require none of the supernatural gifts that they pretend to, to see that the introduction of such
a cast among us would corrupt our blacks and instigate them to bloodshed.

They openly blaspheme the Most High
God and cast comtempt on his holy religion by pretending to receive revelations direct from heaven; by pretending to speak
in unknown tongues by direct inspiration, and by divine pretentions derogatory of God and religion, and to the utter subversion
of human reason.

They declare openly that God has given
them this county of land; and that sooner or later they must and will have possession of our lands for an inheritance; and
in fine, they have conducted themselves on many other occasions in such a manner that we believe it a duty we owe ourselves,
to our wives and children, to the cause of public morals, to remove them from among us as we are not prepared to give up our
possessions to them, or to receive into the bosom of our families as fit companions for our wives and daughters the degraded
and corrupted free negroes and mulattoes that are now invited to settle among us.

Under such a state of things even our
beautiful country would cease to be a desirable residence, and our situation intolerable.

We therefore agree that after timely
warning, and upon receiving an adequate compensation for what little property they cannot take with them, they refuse to leave
us in peace as they found us, we agree to use such means as will be sufficient to remove them; and to that end we pledge to
each other our bodily powers, our lives, fortunes, and sacred honor.

We will meet at the court-house in the
town of Independence on Saturday next, 20th inst., to consult
of ulterior movements.